Where does the time go ? It=s the 18^th of June and I realise I have not written a word for almost three months. Mind you, the weather has been so hot and humid for the last three weeks that the thought of spending a few hours chained to the keyboard has not been contemplated. We are now at Castlesarrasin and the temperatures have broken the 35 degree barrier each day.

The last article ended at the end of March - just about the end of winter. At that time the leaves on the plane trees lining the canal were beginning to show after their branches were stripped bare throughout winter. I had been pretty much on my own during the previous three months as first mate and wife Maureen was away in Australia working. Since no-one in Montech spoke English, the time was well spent brushing up my French and getting to know the locals through the choir I joined.

But now - Spring has sprung... as the doggerel goes, and the mate has returned from the Antipodes, ready for her 50^th birthday and the beginnings of the 2003 cruising and boozing season.

We have made a New Year=s resolution to travel slower, stay longer, explore wider and generally get more into France, since in the past we have been known to cover great distances in a few days only to miss the attractions of the intervening places. Since time is not limited we can afford to stop in or near villages and other landmarks for days or weeks if there are things to do. The Canals Entre Deux Mers, which we have chosen to spend 2003 on, run from near Marseille almost to Bordeaux and include the Canal Lateral a la Garonne on the west of Toulouse and the Canal du Midi on the east. The Lateral has higher bridges having been built 100 years later than the Midi, which was completed in the mid 1600s, so we don=t have to take our roof off as we do on the smaller and lower Midi. For that reason alone we have chosen to cruise this side of the divide and to really get to know the area for the benefit of our guests.

During this year we have quite a few guests including Michael Kiernan who enjoyed three days of cruising through snow in January, Dick and Anne Simpson in the drizzly month of April, Peter and Jane Farrand from the UK in May, Ariaan and Robyn Schipper in June, Gary and Dianne Prattley in July plus Paul and Sue Scott with two friends in September. We had bookings from a number of Americans during July and August but the war, terrorism and SARS caused them to cancel. The hire and hotel boat business plus hotels, restaurants and tour companies have been as badly affected for those reasons as has the international airlines. Whole ports lie full of boats and the canals are almost empty.

The Canal Lateral is 193 km long from Toulouse to Castets en Dorthe, the town with the two locks that put you onto the Garonne River, for the final 54 km to Bordeaux. Since the Garonne is a big and sometimes quite wild, tidal river, and since I had an unfavourable view of the port during winter, we took a decision not to take the boat to Bordeaux, planning instead to stop at Castets and take the train to explore the famous wine city. As it happened we later amended that decision to taking the car, stay in a hotel and explore by foot which we did in mid June. On its length, the canal has about 20 small and large towns and quite a few other attractions.

Departing Toulouse there is a rather uninteresting 43 kilometres to Montech though some industrial and some scrubby farming areas. Two small towns are on the way but neither have port facilities and since the main train tracks run parallel and very close to the canal, the trip is not recommended except to access the Lateral or to leave it for the Midi. I have written at length about Montech which has an attractive port, now managed by Catherine and Christian who also manage the Nichols boat hire franchise there. Two >croisiers= tourist boats, are also stationed there to take visitors through the >Pente d=Eau=, a two tractor device that pushes water containing your boat up a channel to the summit, thereby by-passing the normal five ecluses. This anachronistic device has been listed by UNESCO as a national asset and therefore has to be maintained in working order by the VNF who administer the inland waterways. Montech is also near Montauban, a city sized town with a great market and a lively arts and music program.

From Montech you cruise under interlocking plane trees, originally grown to provide shelter to the horses, women and children that pulled their family=s barges along the canal, to arrive at Castlesarrasin, some 13 km and 7 locks (ecluses) later. Castel won the 2002 competition for >Best Inland Port= since it is a very attractive, landscaped bassin bordered by trees and a handsome Tourist Office and Capitainerie. On the banks here are located a number of annual festivals including wine and jazz. Castel also has a boat repair workshop and a very good weekly market and even has occasional English language movies. We have booked here for our winter stay.

Just 8 km and another 7 ecluses further west brings you over the >pont canal= an aqueduct carrying the canal over the river Tarn and into Moissac, famous for its monastery, museum and cloister. Although part of the buildings were demolished for a new railway, much of the monastery, the whole church and the cloister survived and have been restored, including the remarkable hand painted patterns adorning the huge church=s walls. The cloister has the greatest number of decorated pillars, remarkably intact after some 8 centuries.

This area of France has a great concentration of abbeys and monasteries as it was the centre of the Cistercian monks who entertained nobility and royalty on their way to the crusades and on pilgrimages to Campostella in Spain. This area was also the site of the 100 years war for religious supremacy between the English supported Protestants under the Black Prince and the Pope and French king=s supporters of Catholicism. The Cathars also played a role here as a break-away fundamental catholic group that denied the supremacy of the church of Rome. They were massacred like the Protestants who in their time had committed the same zealous actions against the Catholics. After all that mayhem, along came the Revolution, the period in which church properties were confiscated, religious orders banned and banished and the vast lands and assets of the Cistercians and others sold to wealthy bourgeois or torn down by locals for the materials then used to build their own homes and barns.

We used to enjoy the port at Moissac despite its management by the very unfriendly Monsieur Duseau, operator of a restaurant barge, until he put the price up from i 4 to i 10 per night. While I had tried for months to engage him with courtesy and friendliness, this action and his overheard remark that >foreigners should not be allowed in France= rather changed our minds. While many people repeat the oft said reputation that the French are arrogant, we have found it to be the exception - as in the case of Duseau - otherwise known as Captain Grumpy

17 km after Moissac comes Valence d=Agen which has a sleepy port at the base of a small rise to the town which is dominated by its open squares (places), market and church - in which wonderful concerts are held regularly. Valence also boasts a >spectacular= each year in August called >Au Fil de l=Eau= an acted history of the town and the canal by the people of the town in costume, using the canal and a re-created town on it=s banks as the backdrop. Quite a few towns throughout France are doing the same, thereby attracting thousands of visitors each year.

Near to Valence is one of France=s atomic power plants and with it a free port with electricity and water provided at Golfech, home of the =Goldfish Restaurant=.

The main city on the Canal Lateral is Agen, some 26 km after Valence. This is a big town with many attractions including a very good Art Gallery and Museum, a wonderful theatre with a strong program, good markets and for boating people, a hire boat port and a 200 metre long Pont Canal over the Garonne river, leading to the 4 locks that take you out of the city to the west. We choose to stay in the canal just before the first big bassin as we do not need electricity and water often and this area is shady and quiet. We discovered one of the town=s best restaurants (so certificated by Kate Hill - gourmet chef of the area) and have had some wonderful traditional French meals there.

Just past Agen, back in the rural surrounds is Kate Hill=s house 'Camont' and lying beside it on the canal, her Dutch Tjalk barge >Julia Hoyt=. While she has quit taking cruise charters, her core business of teaching people Gascon cooking, continues, based around the house. This year she has suffered cancellations from the fallout of the war and SARS. her American market dwindling in the short term but she continues to prepare a new book and has a TV documentary under development.

Serignac is a gorgeous and very friendly small town just 12 km from Agen. It has a small canal side quai with power and water free and a large >boularama= on the side of the town in which there are always players of the French game of Petanque (or Boules). We have played there on a number of occasions now and have alsways attracted the local experts to advise us on the fine points of the game or just to ask questions about who we are and where we are from and about the boat. The church here has a corkscrew steeple - unique in our experience.

After Serignac comes Buzet, a famous wine growing area that has a large co-op that produces and markets the wines of the various estates of the region. Unlike Australia, you can come and go as often as you like, try as many and as much of the wines - including their Grande Reserve 95 and buy or not, at prices below that of the retail shops selling the product. This has made the co-op the most visited attraction of the district and has helped to cement the sales and reputation of the wines. A far cry from the parsimonious and expensive methods in place at WA vineyards. The town boasts a number of very good restaurants and has a hire boat base from which you can explore the canal Lateral and also the rivers Baise and Lot which branch off the canal from here.

A number of small towns crowd the waterway from Buzet to Le Mas d=Agenais including Damazan, Villeton and Le Gruyere where Madame Vetou, Kate Hill=s second chef and crew person, runs a Creperie with her daughter and son - who also runs the Crown Blue hire boat base at Le Mas. We met Vetou when Kate needed a crew member for a charter last year and Maureen stepped into the breach. The charterers had just completed the sale of their company to Hewlett Packard and were spending a small part of the fortune this had brought them.

Pont de Sables is at Kilometre 164 (from Toulouse) and is just 5 km from Marmande, another large regional town with railway station and motorway connections. It has a hire boat base and a high wall which scares other smaller boats away so that we invariably have it to attach to. The nearby restaurant enjoys a good reputation and there is a small >epicerie= (grocery) down the main road about 100 metres for small items.

Meilhan is a favourite place of ours for two main reasons. It has a port which charges only i 1.20 for electricity per night - water and accostage free and it boasts the most famous regional butcher (Boucherie). The meat here is superb and the boucher will cut and prepare any variation you want, advise on cooking times and methods and replace items that were not up to standard. There are also a couple of very good restaurants and a couple of pleasant bars and cafes. A small supermarket and a bank add to the facilities that make this a place to stay for a reasonable period. We plan to go there for a couple of weeks while a technician does some work on our generator in July.

7 km on is a round shaped bassin about 200 metres in diameter in which is a small port and playground. A popular place for smaller boats but not one that we are attracted to - as much for the fact of the kids as for the navigational difficulties getting in and out of the very narrow entrance and the danger of going aground while in.

At Kilometre 193 and through 2 locks you arrive at Castets - the end of the line on the canal Lateral and the start of the River Garonne for the final 54 km to Bordeaux. A pretty town, Castets port has been taken over by a young couple who have lifted the price to i 12 per day - exorbitant for us if looked at on a monthly basis - i 360 or so. While they argue that their long term rates are lower, we stay only a few days or a week at most and so do not qualify for long term rates and if we had to pay 12 per night everywhere - we would not have the money for the Vrac (bulk) wine from Buzet.

The Grande Reserve at Buzet comes in at i 18.50 per bottle (about $ 33.50) while the more regular products range around the i 4.00 ($ 7.20). However, you can buy vrac into your own containers at about i 1.50 ($ 2.70) per litre or about $ 2.00 per bottle for essentially the same wine. Given that you can taste the product, good choices can be made for 5 litre containers to offset the higher cost of bottled wine. Our guests agree that our choices of bulk wines are better than many of the considerably higher priced named wines.

Since we have free parking for the car at Montech, we have been able to stop at other towns and offload the scooter, use it to collect the car which we then use to drive into Toulouse or Bordeaux. We have also used the scooter at times to visit beautiful medieval towns seen from the waterways but too far up hills for bicycle rides. In this way we have extended our reach considerably and now, after having navigated up and back to Meilhan and Castets three times, we are beginning to get to know the area.

We have friends from our first winter mooring heading this way in their boat during July and so we will face up to the task of demounting the roof for a cruise through the Canal du Midi, the other side of Toulouse returning here later in the year for winter.